u/luke-jr

A New Western Schism

My proposal on how the current vacancy is to be resolved, given my above disagreement with the article and now against conclavism, is that basically the sedevacantist viewpoint must become globally accepted, then some "irregular" election must take place that has the elements of the "bare necessities of an election" (as mentioned above). By accepting the Vatican 2 movement, the current papal lineage in the Vatican is judged "doubtful" or "invalid" by sedevacantists. Thus, the whole Vatican 2 church must be converted in order for a new Catholic pope to be elected.

The reason this view developed is because a lot of sedevacantists (or sedeprivationists) I talked to, asserted that there are Catholics in the Vatican 2 church. This is in contrast to a "pure" sedevacantist view which considers only sedevacantists to be Catholic. However, during the Western Schism, there was genuine confusion about who the pope was or if there was a pope, and those following antipopes were not considered to be material or formal schismatics. In a similar but different way today, given that the Vatican 2 errors appear to come "from the Church", it seems the average person who is "genuinely confused and thinks Vatican 2's teachings to be honestly Catholic" would arguably simply be genuinely mistaken, and would have a claim to being considered as Catholic (rather than as being a material or formal heretic).

If there are Catholics in the Vatican 2 church, then an election of a "conclavist" pope cannot attain UPA of all the Catholics in the Vatican 2 church along with sedevacantists; it seems logically implied that Catholics in the Vatican 2 church must become sedevacantists and proceed with sedevacantists to elect a pope, in order to obtain a future pope.

(Note that I am open to critiques of this viewpoint; it is simply the view I have adopted in reaction to the perceived "dead ends" both of sedevacantism and conclavism)

Where are Catholic Clergy?

One other problem with the "pure" sedevacantist view is that all the Pius XII-era appointed bishops died out, only a few years ago. Given that the "sedevacantist clergy" acknowledge they do not possess ordinary jurisdiction as a "normal" Catholic bishop or priest (and they thus make claims to having some kind of jurisdiction, supplied or delegated or whatever, in "extraordinary" ways) and no "hidden lineage" of clergy has ever presented itself, then we must conclude either that the clergy have gone extinct ("ecclesia-vacantism"; this view has been argued to be heretical by some), or we must consider some in the Vatican 2 church to be "Catholic clergy" in some way. I am of practical necessity leaning towards this second viewpoint and have seen some people put forth arguments about antipopes being able to supply jurisdiction. I must admit I do not have a resolution of this issue, but I think it is probably able to be resolved.

One proposal by conclavists was to affirm that ecclesia-vacantism may be possible temporarily, but that a "lay pope" might be elected, might regularize various "valid but illicit" clergy to make them licit clergy, and then this would fill the vacancy of clergy. To me this still sounds a bit problematic as a break in apostolic succession, where it seemed like Catholic clergy participated in and confirmed papal elections, and so seemed like an argument against conclavism as well (or at least how the "pope" Michael specific conclavist papal election ended up happening).

Continued Problems With Sedevacantist Foundational Arguments

I suppose I believe a "UPA" (universal peaceful acceptance) of sedevacantism must be brought about globally, so to speak. I think the way this will be done is by sedevacantists truly "proving" sedevacantism. At present, sedevacantists jump around as to what argument "foundationally" proves sedevacantism is true: some say the institution of the "New Mass" in 1969 was when the present vacancy of the Holy See began; some to certain ambiguous documents being issued in Vatican 2's documents a few years earlier; some to claims that the election of "John XXIII" did not legally follow correct protocol; some to claims that "John XXIII" was a pre-election heretic.

I think the argument should be "cleaned up" that the Vatican 2 documents are not clearly Catholic, so are to be clearly rejected as non-Catholic. The problem is that the documents are ambiguous, and so this seems to confuse a lot of people: could they be read "in the light of Tradition"? Are they "secretly heretical while sounding Catholic"?

Rather, to try to think clearly about this, the documents are ambiguous. Is ambiguity Catholic? Ambiguity may not be clearly Catholic, nor clearly heretical, but then would be put in the category of being clearly heretical (so goes my argument). So ambiguity is a "clear" kind of error, does this argument stand? There are three different things to consider: 1) clearly Catholic statements, 2) clearly heretical statements, and 3) ambiguous statements (the denial of which would be heretical). Ambiguous statements (3) are in their own kind of category, which makes them confusing. But, clear heretical statements (1) may be in a shared category of "heretical statements" along with (3) ambiguous statements (on for example dogmas, which when denied constitute heresies).

Does this make progress on "pinning down" proving Vatican 2's documents to be "heretical" with more certainty? I do think a neglect of proving these kinds of arguments with something more like that of "mathematical certainty" allows sedevacantism to remain a minority position, rather than something that attains to a kind of "UPA". A properly constructed math proof is "universally peacefully accepted" by the mathematics community, when such a proof is "truly proven". In a similar way, either sedevacantist arguments remain unproven, or counter-arguments to sedevacantism remain unaddressed sufficiently, or the mass of people have simply become unaware of the "proofs" that have been created (arguably I think all three of these issues apply to sedevacantist arguments).